Million Student March: are the mixed messages saying nothing?

The Million Student March is happening today. It feels like an extension of the Occupy movement. In fact, at UMass Amherst some students were occupying the student union building – probably because it has been raining.

Websites have been running updates from the marches around the country, but it seems well under the hoped for expectations. In some schools, like Missouri with it’s recent race issues, the protests are couched in race issues. Other schools the focus is on the original intention of the Million Student March: to focus on student debt, the “1%”, and a $15/hour minimum wage. These topics definitely have more beef than Yale’s recent tiff over a Halloween Costume email.

The protests at the moment appear underwhelming, but this does not mean it will not have impact and move toward something more organized. Both the political right and the political left have been up in arms about debt for some time: The Tea Party to the Right, Occupy to the Left. Students are jumping in now. Are we in the first touches of revolutionary transformation?

One thing is obvious. There is much protest. It seems to be gaining momentum in a variety of ways, from people of differing ideologies, and once it is squelched, it pops up somewhere else. Protest rises when voices remain unheard by power structures. Dialogue can help create peaceful transformation, but right now it feels like, everyone is shouting, and nobody is listening.

What do you think? How far away is a greater violence than the little we have seen to this point? Are you afraid violence is where we are headed, or do you have a better hope?

Is it possible, on the other hand that people are actually saying too many things, to make a difference in anything at all?